The French have had 14 constitutions since the revolution of 1789. Over the following two centuries, they organized themselves into five republics, three monarchies, three empires, and one fascist dictatorship. The current Fifth Republic was created in 1958 and is creaking alarmingly, so the odds favor a sixth soon. In the United States, meanwhile, the same Constitution has been in effect since 1789. In the United Kingdom, there is no written constitution at all, only an accumulation of law and custom.
The French have undergone major revolutions in 1789, 1830, and 1848, not forgetting near misses such as 1968. No wonder we call an illegitimate power grab a coup d’etat: France has had several (1799, 1815, 1851, 1871, 1940, and, given that General de Gaulle came to Paris on an American tank, not a plebiscite, 1944). The French have also had two major civil wars (in 1793 and 1871) to Americans’ one, and they now talk of a third. In 2021, 20 retired generals sent a public letter to President Emmanuel Macron, warning that hostilities between the French majority and France’s immigrants and their descendants would lead to “civil war” and a military “intervention.”
MICHIGAN SUPREME COURT REJECTS ATTEMPT TO BAN TRUMP FROM 2024 BALLOT
The British have also amended their nonconstitution. In 1945, they elected a socialist government whose redistribution of assets by taxation broke the aristocracy without the use of the guillotine. In 1973, they subordinated their constitution to the European Union: the kind of surrender that, as Napoleon Bonaparte saw, usually involves a full-scale invasion. In 2020, the British regained their independence from Europe. As American history shows, this kind of insubordination usually involves a war and a constitutional redo, but again, the British managed it by legal amendments alone.
There will be more French revolutions, but will there ever be a Canadian revolution? The Anglophone democracies do it differently. The French are not just constitutionally dissatisfied because they breakfast only on a pastry and coffee, leading to derangement by mid-morning through dyspepsia and low blood sugar. They are condemned to constitutional uncertainty forever because they uprooted their political system entirely after 1789.
This is why the people who wanted to restore the French monarchy called themselves legitimistes. Legitimacy makes for stability, and stability requires roots. The moral here is a variation on what Colin Powell called the Pottery Barn Law, known to French jurists as la loi de la grange de poterie: You break it, it owns you. Political legitimacy is easy to destroy but hard to restore.
It couldn’t happen here, as Sinclair Lewis said in his 1935 novel showing how it could. It does happen here, of course, but it doesn’t happen here like it does in France. The English-speaking democracies handle their revolutions discreetly, like Harry Potter under his cloak of invisibility. A modern revolution brings a new class to power. This involves a substantial transfer of assets and a redefinition of citizenship. When the American Revolution of 1776 did this, it required a new constitution. The Civil War of 1861 did this, too, but after 1865, the Constitution only required amendment.
So, now that we have congratulated ourselves on the hearty breakfasts and deep-rooted legitimacy of the English-speaking democracies, a word of warning about an equally deep contrast: The French do it in the streets, while Americans do it in private. France is a heavily regulated technocracy, but French politics is theater and rhetoric.
All French politicians remain orators. There are no orators in America’s 2024 presidential race, though there is a comedian. American politics is managed discreetly. As on television, the drama is legal and procedural. This allows Americans to get on with the business of doing business, but it also masks the dramatic changes that accumulate into the incremental revolutions that typify Anglophone politics.
As Christopher Caldwell shows in The Age of Entitlement, a creeping revolution of legal activism has created a “second Constitution” piecemeal since the 1960s. The Democrats have become the party of the second Constitution. The Republicans remain the party of the first, mostly. The candidate of “normal” process, President Joe Biden, denies the legitimacy of his “extreme MAGA” opposition while his party’s placemen in the judiciary delegitimize the presumptive Republican candidate.
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Former President Donald Trump resembles less an Anglo processor than a French performer, such as the 19th-century socialist Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, who, upon seeing a protest march passing his cafe table, excused himself and said, “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
Trump is giving the second Constitution its “Thermidorian reaction.” This is not an allergic response to lobster. Named for a month in the French revolutionary calendar, a Thermidor comes to every revolution. In Thermidor 1794, a coup against the revolution’s leadership ended the Terror. In November 2024, Americans will vote not just on whether to reverse the "woke" terror, but also on which constitution wins. People have had revolutions over less.
The French connection
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29.12.2023
The French have had 14 constitutions since the revolution of 1789. Over the following two centuries, they organized themselves into five republics, three monarchies, three empires, and one fascist dictatorship. The current Fifth Republic was created in 1958 and is creaking alarmingly, so the odds favor a sixth soon. In the United States, meanwhile, the same Constitution has been in effect since 1789. In the United Kingdom, there is no written constitution at all, only an accumulation of law and custom.
The French have undergone major revolutions in 1789, 1830, and 1848, not forgetting near misses such as 1968. No wonder we call an illegitimate power grab a coup d’etat: France has had several (1799, 1815, 1851, 1871, 1940, and, given that General de Gaulle came to Paris on an American tank, not a plebiscite, 1944). The French have also had two major civil wars (in 1793 and 1871) to Americans’ one, and they now talk of a third. In 2021, 20 retired generals sent a public letter to President Emmanuel Macron, warning that hostilities between the French majority and France’s immigrants and their descendants would lead to “civil war” and a military “intervention.”
MICHIGAN SUPREME COURT REJECTS ATTEMPT TO BAN TRUMP FROM 2024 BALLOT
The British have also amended........
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